Frank Ordonez / The Post-StandardKris Joseph before Saturday's game against Marquette

Kris Joseph is 23 years old. He has played in 120 college basketball games, sometimes studying the contest’s intricacies from the bench, but more recently participating in a central amount of Syracuse action.

He has essentially seen it all. Teams with losing records hanging tough with his Syracuse Orange. Tenacious teams, timid teams. Teams that somehow summon the energy and the will to rise from what appears to be the basketball dead to make a stunning and unsuspecting run.

So on Saturday, when Marquette shook off a 23-point first-half deficit to trim SU’s lead to a tenuous two points with 5:15 left in the game, Joseph relied on all that basketball experience to stay rooted in the moment. At one point, during the frenzy of Marquette’s mounting comeback, he found a minute to gather his teammates and remind them that they were, in fact, still winning the basketball game.

“We’re up and we’re home. Let’s just keep our composure,” Joseph instructed the Orange. “They made their little run, which was expected. We just had to hold our heads and attack.”

Joseph did his part against the feisty Golden Eagles in SU’s 73-66 victory in the Carrier Dome. He played 38 minutes, the most he’s logged all season. And he was efficient with the time SU coach Jim Boeheim allotted him.

The senior forward scored a team-high 17 points on 5-of-8 shooting. On a day when SU players struggled to shoot 39 percent from the floor, Joseph was the lone Orange man to make more than 50 percent of his field goal attempts.

He sank one of those shots during a crucial stretch in the game’s closing minutes. Much will correctly be made of Dion Waiters’ huge block of Darius Johnson-Odom with 4:20 left in the game. But Joseph drained the shot that closed the curtains on Marquette’s chances.

Waiters muscled into the lane, drew the attention of Marquette’s defenders and then kicked out to a wide-open Joseph on the wing. Joseph shot the ball, it snapped softly through the net and the Orange owned a relatively comfortable 66-57 advantage.

“He made some pretty big shots. That’s just Kris Jo,” Waiters said. “He’s one of the leaders – him and Scoop. We look forward to him taking big shots. I just tried to create space for him.”

“I knew I was going to shoot it because I knew they would get sucked in by Dion’s drive,” Joseph said. “And he did a great job of passing it back out. I had my feet set. The mechanics -- you know how that goes. That’s preschool.”

Joseph said SU assistant Adrian Autry kept telling his during last week’s practices to stay balanced on his shot, to stop drifting to the right or left when he launched the ball. “Try to land where you jump,” Autry told him. Autry, the former SU point guard, works with the Orange forwards individually before each practice, firing passes at them as they shoot from the perimeter.

Against Marquette, Joseph was a perfect 4-for-4 from beyond the arc. He has come a long way since his first two seasons at SU, when every 3-point attempt was a misguided adventure. After Saturday’s outing, Joseph is shooting 42 percent from 3-point range this year. His first two seasons at SU, Joseph shot 24 percent from beyond the arc. Back then, he was a penetrating, opportunistic forward without much of a perimeter presence.

“I think he’s really good,” Marquette coach Buzz Williams said. “I think with him, as best you can, you have to try to dictate which direction he goes off the bounce because he’s so long and he can cover so much space. If you just guard him 10 toes to 10 toes, he’s gonna beat you. So you have to restrict his space. And I thought at times we did that, but he’s really grown and matured in his time here. He’s really, really good. And he’s a hard guy to defend.”

He added four rebounds, four assists and three steals to his Saturday resume. But Joseph made one of his most tangible contributions in an elusive category.

After nearly four seasons of college basketball, he has come to appreciate the ebb and flow of emotions during a basketball game and to apply the proper perspective to the moment. At the end of the first half, Marquette’s Jae Crowder announced to a group of SU players that the Golden Eagles would bounce back in the second half, that the Orange should not count Marquette out.

Joseph understood that Crowder’s proclamation, issued in true trash-talking spirit, could very well come true. He has played in 120 college basketball games. Very little surprises him anymore.